THE FAULT IN OUR CIGARS: A Grohn Jeen Parody!
by Grohn Jeen
Summary: Hazy Vapes and Puffgustus try to stop smoking cigarettes in this hilarious parody. "Ashtray?" "Ashtray." (Don't read if easily triggered by fun.)
1. Chapter 1

As the Doctor came in, the Dutch Tobacco Man faced the x-rays: "You see those lungs on the left? Those are normal. These ones on the right are yours if you continue smoking cigarettes. Look at it clinging to them, black and charred, taking your life expectancy with it."

"What makes them like that?" The Dutch Tobacco Man asked.

"Ash," the Doctor said. "Well, and cancer."

—Smoker Van Hookah, An Imperial Addiction


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER ONE:

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was addicted to tobacco, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time lighting up, never cleaned out my ashtray, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about the smoking cigarettes.

Whenever you read a smoking support group booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of quitting. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of quitting tobacco. Depression is a side effect of literally dying to death from not smoking cigarettes. (Death is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.) But my mom believed I required treatment, so she took me to see my gym coach who agreed that I was swimming in a debilitating state of clinical asthma, and that therefore my cigarette intake should be adjusted and also I should attend a weekly Stop Smoking Support Group.

This Stop Smoking Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of nicotine-driven addiction. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of not wanting to come.

The Stop Smoking Support Group, of course, was depressing as hell. It met every Wednesday in the basement of a stone-walled Episcopal church shaped like a pair of lungs. We all sat in an oval, the exact shape of a cigar, where the two organs would have met, where the lungs of Jesus would have been.

I noticed this because Pattywhack, the Stop Smoking Support Group Leader and only person over eighteen who could buy cigarettes, talked about the lungs of Jesus every freaking meeting, all about how we, as young tobacco survivors, were sitting right in Christ's very sacred chest cavity and whatever.

So here's how it went in God's lungs: The six or seven or ten of us wheezed/hacked/sputtered in, turned in our cartons, and sat down in the Circle of Misery, and listened to Pattywhack recount for the thousandth time his depressingly miserable life story—how he got cancer so bad his balls fell off and his wife left him, taking the car, the dog, and his cigarettes with her.

AND YOU TOO MIGHT BE SO UNLUCKY!

Then we introduced ourselves. Name. Age. Brand. And how we're doing today. I'm Hazy, I'd say when they'd get to me. Sixteen. Marlboro Red 100s in the box Special Blend. And I'm just swell.

Once we got around the circle, Pattywhack always asked if anyone wanted to share.

To my disappointment, he didn't mean cigarettes.

The only redeeming facet of the Stop Smoking Support Group was this blind kid named Eyesquit who remained permanently unable to see thanks to the cloud of smoke that constantly surrounded his face. Oh, and he was blind.

Eyesquit and I communicated almost exclusively through inhales and exhales. Each time someone talked about anti smoking diets or nicotine patches or whatever, he'd glance over at me and make a noise as though he was inhaling a cigarette. I'd tap my pack of cigarettes in my pocket and exhale in response.

So the Stop Smoking Support Group blew by like a cigarette getting put out by the wind, and after a few weeks, I grew rather sick of withdraws. In fact, on the Wednesday I made the acquaintance of Puffgustus, I tried my level best to get out of the Stop Smoking Support Group while sitting on a couch with my mom on my third cigarette of a twelve hour marathon of the previous season's 19 Cigarettes and Counting, which admittedly I had already seen, but still.

Me: "I refuse to attend the Stop Smoking Support Group. Can you just let me watch 19 Cigarettes and Counting? I've only smoked two packs today."

Mom: "I'll give you ten bucks."

Me: "Can I use the money to buy cigarettes?"

Mom: "Hazel you deserve a life."

I thought of the possibility of not getting cigarettes so I would look super sad. Then I puffed out my bottom lip so she'd feel sorry for me.

Mom: "No."

Me: "What about Vapes?"

Mom: "Fine. I'll let you vape, but no more cancer sticks."

Me: ERMAGHEERRRDD MUUUUMMMM. Don't call them cancer sticks! Someone might get offended!

Mom: Snowflakes gonna snowflake.

After we'd gotten my new Vapes, I was a changed smoker. No more smoking for me, I vowed. It was all smoke under the bridge. I went to the Stop Smoking Support Group with a spring in my step. Mom pulled into the lung shaped driveway behind the church at 4:20. I smoked my new Cotton Candy vapor to kill time.

I didn't want to take the elevator because taking the elevator smelled like smoke and I was a changed addict so I took the stairs. I grabbed a suspicious looking cookie and poured some "punch" into a Red Solo Cup and then turned around.

A boy was staring at me.

I was quite sure I'd never seen him before. Thin haired with barely any muscles, his body folded into the plastic elementary school chair he was sitting in like a cigarette that had been scrunched up on the sidewalk. Bristled hair, straight and short. He looked ten years older than he actually was and he sat with his tailbone against the edge of the chair, biting his nail, palms weak, arms heavy, mom's spaghetti.

Was someone paying Eminem?

I looked away, suddenly conscious of the Vapes in my pocket. I was wearing some old jeans I had wrestled off a homeless man, a yellow T-shirt advertising a vintage grunge band I didn't listen to, a smirk of obscure satisfaction, and a beanie, even though it was well over 100 degrees outside but it made me look cool so idk whateva. Furthermore, I had ridiculously sunken cheeks, a side effect of smoking. I looked like a Syrian refugee. And yet—I cut a glance to him, and his eyes were still on me.

It occurred to me that the session was starting. I walked into the circle and sat down next to Eyesquit, two seats away from the boy. I glanced again. He was still watching me.

I pulled out my phone and clicked it so it would display the time: 4:20. My phone was broke so it always displayed the same time. But I figured if I kept checking it, it'd have to be right eventually.

The circle filled in with the unlucky twelve-to-eighteens, and then Pattywhack started us out with the smoke addict's prayer: God, grant me the willpower to stop smoking, the courage to avoid peer pressure, and the wisdom to know was generally a bad idea to start this disgusting habit in the first place.

The guy was still staring at me.

I drumed my hands on Eyesquit's head.

I needed a cigarette.

Pattywhack talked some more and then finally it was time for the introductions.

"Eyesquit, perhaps you'd like to go first today. I know you're facing a challenging time."

"Yeah," Eyesquit said, putting out his cigarette and fanning the haze out in front of him. "I'm Eyesquit. I'm seventeen. I smoke menthols and it looks like I'm still blind. But a lot of people have it worse. I mean, some people can't even afford cigarettes. My girlfriend helps, though. Like when I'm driving she'll scream, "Dear God, dear God, you're going to kill us!" so we don't end up crashing. And my friend Puffgustus doesn't trip me down the stairs as much."

"We're here for you," Pattywhack said gently placing him into a sleeping hold, as he wrestled his carton of cigarettes from him.

When it was Puffgustus' turn, he smiled a little. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. As though he were a cigarette himself. "My name is Puffgustus," he said. "And I'm a chain smoker."

"And how are your lungs?" asked Pattywhack.

"Oh, they're grand." Puffgustus said sarcastically. "I'm on a unhealthy spiral of deterioration that only goes down my friend."

When it was my turn, I said, "My name is Hazy. I'm sixteen. I used to smoke Marlboro and I've been sober for 52 minutes."

The hour proceeded slowly, like the drag of a cool, pepperment menthol. We talked about withdraws, cravings, and anger; it was agreed friends just didn't get it; tears were shed; more cigarettes were confiscated, but luckily my Vapes remained safe in my wool hat. Though it had begun to stick to my head with the rising humidity.

Neither of us said anything for the rest of the Stop Smoking Support

Neither Puffgustus nor I spoke again until Pattywhack said, "Puffgustus, perhaps you'd like to share your fears with the group."

"My fears?"

"Yes."

"I fear a world without cigarettes," he said without a moment's pause.

"Would you care to expand on that?" Pattywhack pressed.

"It would be a drag."

Eyesquit snickered.

Pattywhack seemed lost. "Would, uh, would anyone like to speak to that?"

I hadn't had a proper cigarette in fifty two million eons so my right eye was twitching a little more than it should, but just this once, I decided to speak. I half raised my hand and Pattywhack nodded at me to go ahead.

I looked over at Puffgustus, who looked back at me. You could almost picture smoke through his eyes they were so gray. "There will come a time," I said, "when all the cigarettes are gone. All of them. There will come a time when there are no smoke breaks, no tobacco plants, no lighters. There will be no one left to sell carcinogens to Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen, let alone you. Everything we smoked and inhaled and exhaled will be forgotten and all of this"—I fanned the remaining cloud of Eyesquit's smoke into my nose—"will have been for naught. Maybe the time where cigarettes are gone is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of the tobacco industry, we will not survive forever. There was a time before organisms experienced nicotine, and there will be a time after. And if the inevitability of withdraws worries you, I encourage you to start vaping. God knows that's what everyone else does."

Neither of us said anything for the rest of the Stop Smoking Support Group. At the end, we all had to hold hands, although I could feel Eyesquit's arm roaming in my pockets for stray cigarettes, and Pattywhack led us in a prayer. "Lord Jesus Christ," we are gathered here in Your lungs, literally in Your lungs, as nicotine survivors. Guide us to life and Light, but never lighters. May your lungs be with us through times of relapse and strife..."

When Pattywhack was finished and turned his back, we all went back to —DYING FROM WITHDRAWS— and it was over. Puffgustus pushed himself out of his chair and walked over to me. I didn't want to make contact, lest I see the withdraw evident in his eyes. It was too hard, coming face to face with what I might've been if I hadn't been saved by the burning coil of water vapor in my pocket.

"Hey," the boy said, pointing to his shirt pocket. "My cigarettes are up here."

I met his eyes, unable to avoid it.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Hazy."

"What's your middle name?"

"Vapes."

"You're just blowin' smoke," he said. "Get out, is that really your name?"

"My parents went to Woodstock."

"I see," Puffgustus said. "Hazy Vapes. I like it. "

"What are you doing?" I asked, watching him take a hidden pack of cigarettes from his sock and a lighter.

"I'm smoking. Because smoking is fun. I enjoy doing fun things, and I decided like five seconds ago not to deny myself the simple pleasures of doing what I want."

"Then why are you trying to stop smoking?"

"My parents want me to quit. They don't want me to grow up to be chainsmokers like them. Too late," he said, flicking his lighter against the end. He flipped his brittle hair. "I'm a lost cause."

"No," I said. "I refuse to believe that."

"It's true. I smoke like a chimney. I can't go five seconds without lighting up."

"Well what if I help you quit?"

"You would do that?"

"Sure. We've known each other at least five minutes. Why wouldn't I?"

He nodded. "True enough Hazy Vapes."

"The it's settled," I said. "From now on, I vow to keep these away from you," I said. "Now, for our first order of business: dispose of these lung darts in the trash can."

Puffgustus walked down the stairs reluctantly, throwing his cigarette in a nearby garbage can which set off the smoke alarms in the lobby.

"What did you do?" I said to him, trying to fan the flames with my jacket. Puffgustus was standing there, inhaling the brushfire like a lifeline. It was that moment that Pattywhack walked through the door. Pattywhack screamed.

"THE LUNGS OF JESUS ARE ON FIRE! THE LUNGS OF JESUS ARE ON FIYAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! SOMEONE HELP!"

I grabbed Puffgustus's hand and told him to run. We made a break for it, as Pattywhack reached for the fire extinguisher, and as I looked back at the literal lungs of Jesus, for one small moment, they almost seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

Me and Puff made our way out to the parking lot. Mom wasn't there yet, which wasn't unusual because she was probably still looking for my hidden stash of cigarettes. I glanced around and saw Eyesquit and a girl making out against the church wall, which he usually did on account of the fact she sang so horribly. That's how he had started up, he hated the sound of her voice he literally convinced her to take up smoking so she wouldn't. "See I'm doing it too," he had said to her one day. On hit was all it took.

Puffgustus reached for the cigarettes in his pocket and I slapped his hand away. "No," I told him. "From now on we're going cold turkey. Hand them over."

Without looking at me Puffgustus said, "You're killing my vibe here, Hazy Vapes. It's literally been one whole minute since I had one."

"Oh my God. You think it makes you look cool."

Puffgustus turned up the collar of his leather jacket, spurring his lighter to life. He even puffed out his bottom lip for good measure. "I don't know what you mean," he scoffed, ruffling his hair as he did so.

I slapped the cigarette out of his hand before he could light them. "NO," I said. "I promised you I would help you quit and I will not break that vow."

I felt this weird mix of disappointment and anger welling up inside of me, rising and rising like the exhaust of a cigarette. I didn't even know what the feeling was, really, just that there was a lot of it smoldering inside of me, and I wanted to pick up Puffgustus' cigarettes and smoke them for myself. But I couldn't. I had to be strong for Puffgustus. We would stay sober together.

I felt a hand grab mine.

"They don't kill you unless you smoke them but somehow, even if it's not good for you, you somehow convince yourself you're doing the right thing. It's denial, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, light it, and keep telling yourself it's not going to kill you one day. But it will, Hazy. It will kill me. Please. I can't do this without you."

"Very well," I said. "Let me just tell my mom where I'll be." I tapped my mom's car window. "Mom, I'm running off with a boy I just met. Be back later. Kay. Bye!"


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER TWO:

Puffgustus was bad at running. We'd run at least one fiftieth of a mile before Puffgustus said, "I failed my physical three times. The doctors say I'm lucky to be alive."

"You don't say."

After a long walk, Puffgustus tripped over a curb and pointed to a house with the words Home Is Where the Smoke Is, and the entire house turned out to be festooned in such observations. Good Cigarettes Are Hard to Find and Impossible to Quit read an illustration above the coatrack. True Love Is Born from Shared Tobacco promised a needlepoint pillow in the shape of a cigar. Puffgustus saw me reading. "My parents call them exercises in willpower," he explained.

"They're everywhere."

"But don't they smoke?"

"Do as I say, not as I do, son," Puffgustus mimicked his parents.

His mom and dad call him Puff. They were smoking Cuban cigars in the kitchen (a piece of stained glass by the sink read in bubbly letters Withdraw Is Forever). His mom was rolling tobacco with paper, which his dad then rolled up and placed in a glass box. They did not seem too surprised by my arrival, which made sense: Puffgustus must bring home a lot of smokers. He's under 18. He had to bum his stash from somewhere.

"This is Hazy Vapes," he said, by way of introduction.

"Just Hazy," I said.

"What's token, Hazy?" asked Puff's dad. He was tall—almost as tall as Puff—and skinny in a way that models get when they smoke too much.

"Okay," I said.

"How was Eyesquit's Stop Smoking Support Group?"

"It was lit," Puffgustus said.

"So Hazy, you'll be joining us at the hookah bar, I hope?" asked his mom.

"Why can she smoke but not me?" Puffgustus whined.

"That's okay. I don't smoke, anymore," I said. "Only vaping for me."

Puff opened his mouth to respond but a fly flew into it and he started choking. He squeezed his hands to his throat, spewing and hacking like he had inhaled the fumes of a cigarette for the first time.

After his parents had found their lighters, I followed him with a trash bag down to the basement. A shelf at my eye level reached all the way around the room, and it was stuffed solid with smoking memorabilia: dozens of cigars and gold lighters, tobacco and rolling paper. There were also old fashioned pipes.

"I'm used to smoking a lot," he explained.

"Well not anymore," I said handing him a trash bag. Puffgustus looked dejected but nodded. I was firm. "This has to go."

"So what's your favorite story?" Puffgustus asked, sitting down next to me after we'd successfully cleared his room of contraband.

My favorite book, by a wide margin, was An Imperial Addiction, but I wasn't sure if I should tell him about it. Sometimes, you smoke a cigarette and it fills you with this ashy blackening smog, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together again unless and until all living humans light up. But on the other hand, I reasoned, Puffgustus needed to get used to resisting temptation, so I told him about it. Cold smokey —I mean turkey. Yes. That was the word.

"Does it feature cigarettes?"

"Yes," I said.

"Menthols?"

"No."

"Fine," Puffgustus pouted. "I'll read your stupid book. But you have to read this." He held up a book called The Price of Menthols.

We watched a Smoking documentary with several nicotine patches on us. An hour into the movie, Puffgustus' parents came in reeking of ash and offered Puffgustus their pipe, which he aptly refused with my encouragement.

As the credits rolled, Puffgustus searched for his keys. His mom sat down next to me and said, "I just love this one, don't you?" I guess I had been looking toward the Discouragement above the TV, a drawing of shriveled up lungs with the caption Without Cigarettes, How Could We Know Joy?

And it was true. Vapes were great, but suffice to say that the existence of Vapes does not in any way affect the taste of cigarettes. But they were bad for me. They would make me die. So I said, "Yes, a lovely thought," and tried my best not to think about them.

I drove Puffgustus' car home with Puffgustus riding smokegun.

As I pulled outside of my house, Puffgustus clicked the advertisement for cigarettes off. The air thickened, blackening up like smog. He was probably thinking about smoking, and I was definitely thinking about smoking. Wondering if I wanted to, if I could just stop at one. How long it'd take to come down from one hit. I'd vaped, sure, but it'd been a while since I'd reached for the real thing. Half a day, at least. Half a day and a second. Half a day and two seconds… three…

I put the car in park and looked over at him. He was really sickly looking and he was shaking and rocking back and forth. I know he was supposed to be. After all, withdraws weren't supposed to be easy, but still. Maybe if he just had one, it could get him through the night. He didn't have to go crazy. It was just a little hit. Just a taste.

"Hazy Vapes," he said, my name; yet another reminder of the euphoria we'd given up. "Can we smoke? Please. Just one. I'm begging you."

I thought of the stash I'd hidden in the glove compartment. "Just one," I said, giving in. My hands were shaking. He drew a match up the side of the matchbox and lit the end of his cigarette.

Half a pack later, we sat in the car.

"May I smoke with you tomorrow?" Puffgustus asked me.

I lit the end of another cigarette, knowing this was wrong, but smiled. "Sure."

"Tomorrow?"

"Patience, grass smoker," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager."

"Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to smoke again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow."

I rolled my eyes, and then another cigarette.

"I'm serious," he said.

"We shouldn't be doing this," I told him. I grabbed my stash of cigars, shoving them back in the glove compartment. "It's not right."

"Hazy, what's one more time?"

I couldn't answer. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Wait! How will you even find me? You don't even know my phone number!"

"I'll send a smoke signal."


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER THREE:

I stayed up pretty late that night reading The Price of Menthols. (Spoiler alert: The Price of Menthols is cancer.) It wasn't an Imperial Addiction, but the cigarettes sounded fairly enjoyable despite killing, by my count, no fever than 118 individuals in 284 pages.

So I got up late the next morning, a Thursday. Mom's policy was to never wake me up, because one of the job requirements for being addicted to cigarettes was generally not wanting to do things, so I was kind of confused when my mom poked me with a stick to see if I was still wheezing.

I reached for my vape. It was too early for this.

"It's only ten!" she said incredulously.

"Vaping helps with side effects," I told her.

Mom picked an empty carton from off the floor with a look of disappointment. "Did that boy give it to you?" she asked out of nowhere.

"By it, do you mean cancer?" I asked.

"You are too much," Mom said. "The cigarettes, Hazy. I mean the cigarettes."

"Nah. I got 'em from Eyesquit. He's going blind so he never notices them missing."

"I thought we talked about this."

"Stealing?"

"Smoking."

I followed each word with an inhale. "Can't. Talk. Vaping. Withdraws. Fighting."

"Well," Mom said, "it looks like we'll be celebrating after all."

"It's National Vaping Day?" I said excitedly.

"Did you seriously forget?"

"Maybe?"

"It's Thursday, March twentieth!" she basically screamed, and I nearly dropped my carton of cigarettes.

My head was spinning, trying to remember what had been so important about this day.

"HAZY! IT'S YOUR THIRTY-THIRD DEATHDAY!"

"Ohhhhhhh," I said. My mom had started celebrating my deathday every year when I started lighting up. She loved parties and fanfare so she wanted to celebrate all the years I would inevitably shave off my life from my poor life choices.

"What do you want to do on your very special deathday?"

"I want to get more vapes," I said.

"Would you like to invite to invite Patch?" Patch was my nicotine patch dealer. His product helped me cut back on the real thing. He sold that too.

"He's going to meet us there."

Mom drove me directly from school to the vape store attached to the mall, where I purchased both Midnight Drags and Requiem for a Cigarette, the first two sequels to The Price of Menthols, and then I walked outside to vape. My watch still said 4:20 —I had to get that fixed— and at 4:20 precisely, I noticed Patch swagger in. He wore a leather jacket and a knee-length charcoal coat that smelled like cigarettes; it seemed to permeate the air around him. I suppose he thought made him look suave.

"How's it toking?" said Patch.

"I'm vaping now, actually," I told him, tapping the end of my vapes. "Health is good, I presume?"

"Cigarettes are better," Patch said, lighting one up. I had to force myself not to inhale the second hand smoke I so desperately craved. It was a gateway puff.

I grabbed my vape and took a long drag, trying my best to long for the cigarettes I could no longer have. "Wait till you try chocolate," I said.

We went to the vape store. As we were shopping, Patch kept picking out cigarettes he wanted to try. Mayfairs. Lucky Strikes. Winstons. Camels. Menthols. Lights. Cigarettes of all kinds, all equally cancerous.

"Vapes," I tried to tell Patch. "They have to be vapes. I can't smoke cigarettes anymore. I'm sober now. The cigar doesn't burn at both ends for me like it used to."

"Can't smoke cigarettes," Patch pondered to himself, seeming to consider the statement, as though it were ridiculous. He snapped his fingers. "Of course!" Patch held up a bag of Mary Jane. "Do you want one of these?"

I gasped, slapping the weed straight out of his hand. "What the frick frack snick snack?" I yelled. "I'm in recovery," I hissed. I knew it had medicinal properties that helped him with his cancer, but I had to do this right. I couldn't just go shooting off with half-baked ideas.

"Sorry Haze," Patch said. "I didn't realize how serious your commitment was to quitting. You know if you're so committed to being healthy, I could help you quit vaping too."

I gasped, clutching the vapes to my chest. "Monster!"

I ended up just picking out some grape vapes and some more chocolate ones. I watched Patch speak to the clerk. She was showing him all the ins and outs of vaping, though he seemed skeptical of the whole idea. I kind of wanted to take out Midnight Drags and read it for a while, but I was afraid reading about smoking and being so close to a store that sold them would be a bad idea. As we exited the store, Patch donned his new vapes in hand. He took a puff and extended his arm, "Wanna a hit?"

"I should head home actually," I said, gathering up my vapes. "I wanna watch America's Next Top Chainsmoker."

"Sure, of course," Patch said. He blew a wisp of smoke on both cheeks as a parting gesture. "Smoke be with you," he said.

"And also with you."

I didn't go home, though. I walked back into the vape store and purchased more vapes. I'd told mom to pick me up at 6, but my watch said 4:20 so I wandered around aimlessly until a mall cop saw me smoking and chased me to the end of the street corner.

I looked at my watch again and remembered it was broken.

I found a bench with a Stamp Out Smoking ad and started reading Midnight Drags. It featured a sentence to corpse ratio of nearly 100:1, and I tore through it the way me and Puff had torn through those cigarettes. My favorite was Seargent Ashtray. His pack of choice was Camel.

(Spoiler alert: He dies.)

I locked my vapes up early that night, slamming the vaulted door of my double-bolted safe before curling into the covers the way tobacco did into the fibers of rolling paper. And then I started reading An Imperial Addiction for the millionth time.

AIA is about a girl named Ash, no relation to Midnight Drag's Ashtray and her cock-eyed mom, who is a professional tobacco farmer, and they have a normal life in Cuba until her daughter Ashtray starts smoking the supply.

But it's not a stop smoking book book, because stop smoking books suck. Like, in stop smoking books, the author always quotes you these preachy statistics on tobacco like how one person dies every 6 seconds from a tobacco-related disease or how cigarettes are made with the same chemicals used in prison executions, rocket fuel, rat poison, batteries, car exhaust, and nail polish remover, or how your pet cat is like two times as likely to get cancer if its owner smokes. I mean, who wanted to know that one cigarette butt soaked in a liter of water killed half the laboratory fish at San Diego State University in their comprehensive studies or that in the U.S. tobacco kills more American's than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, murders, suicides, drugs, and fires combined? No. I couldn't stand stop smoking books. Those were the worst. I mean, what kind of self-loathing addict would want to read something like that?

Also, Anna is honest about her addiction in a way no one else really is: Throughout the book, she refers to herself as a chainsmoker, which is just totally correct. Chainsmokers are essentially side effects of the relentless stress that made the misery of life possible. So as the story goes on, she smokes more, the carcinogens and toxic chemicals racing to kill her, and her mom falls in love with this Dutch tobacco trader Ash calls the Dutch Tobacco Man. The Dutch Tobacco Man has lots of tobacco and very eccentric ideas about how to smoke it, but Ash thinks this guy might be a cop and possibly not even a farmer, and then just as she's about to get busted for underage smoking, the book ends right in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a cigaret—

I understand the story ended because Ash got busted for smoking under eighteen and this was supposed to symbolize how abruptly life can end and whatever when you take up smoking, but I needed to know what happened. I needed to know for sure if Ash had been arrested. I'd written a dozen letters to Smoker Van Hookah, each asking for the same answers about what happens after the end of the story: whether Dutch Tobacco Man is a cop, whether Ash ends up in juvie, what happens to her hamster with cervical cancer, whether Ash's friends ever stop smoking or post her mother's bail money. But he'd never responded to any of my letters. To be fair, they had been smeared with cigarette ash.

AIA was the only book Smoker Van Hookah had written, and all anyone seemed to know about him was that after the book came out he moved from the United States to Cuba and became a really bad poker player. Like seriously ridiculously bad. I'd heard he'd lost five premium cigar boxes to a pug in a fuchsia leotard. But it had been ten years since An Imperial Addiction came out, and Van Hookah hadn't been spotted once. Not even to buy cigarettes. From what I'd heard, his assistant Lighterfluid ran most of his errands.

As I reread that night, I kept getting distracted imagining Puffgustus relapsing. I wondered if he'd resist the temptation, or if he'd find the strength to fight it. Then I remembered I had purchased him a nifty shock collar that zapped him whenever he tried to light up a cigarette. All was well, I told myself, letting the wisps from my vapes lull me into the blissful oblivion of sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, it was to Puffgustus texting me incessantly.

Tell me there's an off button for this shock collar.

Hazy Vapes, tell me there's a way out of this thing. I need my cigarettes.

OH MY GOD IT'S SHOCKING ME ME I AM LITERALLY DYING TO DEATH

YOU ARE STABBING ME IN MY SOUL

PLS

Then came the last text:

I guess that shock collar wasn't so effective after all, huh?

I groaned. Puffgustus had managed to break free from his restraints. Not only that, he had found a way to take the collar off. This wasn't good. I grabbed my keys, forgetting my vapes altogether, slamming my foot on the petal as soon as the car door slammed behind me. There was no telling what he'd do to his body with free reign over his secret stash. I wasn't stupid enough to think he hadn't held back.

When I finally arrived, I skidded into the driveway, power walking, on account of my chronic asthma, straight into the house and downstairs where Puffgustus and Eyesquit were playing video games. Eyesquit was lighting up. Puff already had two going.

"Hand them over," I said, sternly. "You too Eyesquit."

"Or what," Eyesquit said. "You'll decide you never want to see me again."

Puffgustus high fived him but it was a bit awkward seeing as Eyesquit hadn't anticipated the movement. A red palm print lingered on his cheek from where Puffgustus' hand had smacked his forehead. "Maybe one day we'll see eye to eye," Puff said, patting him on the head.

"Cigarettes," I gritted. "Now."

Puffgustus sighed, handing over his stash.

"Now you," I told Eyesquit. "We're all in this together."

"Go easy on him," Puffgustus said, gently. "He just broke up with Harmonica."

"Why would anyone ever dump Eyesquit? Is she blind?"

"I know," Puffgustus agreed. "I just don't see it."

"I dumped Harmonica. I couldn't handle it. She was always singing loud and off key. Then one day I just couldn't stand it anymore so I shoved a fistfull of cigarettes in her mouth. Just a few. Just so she'd shut up. Then I felt so guilty, I lit one too. It snowballed from there. I started taking smoke breaks so I could go five minutes without hearing her disgusting voice but then she followed me everywhere. And the more she smoked, the more hoarse and raspy her vocal chords became. Her singing became even worse. I regretted it. I regretted lighting up as soon as I took that first drag but it was too late to stop. Too late to take it all back."

"So what happened?" I asked.

"Two months into it, she said she couldn't handle it," he told me. "The whole time she kept saying 'tomorrow' to me. We'll quit 'tomorrow', she'd say. Right after this cigarette. Then it was the next one and the next one and the next one. I finally put my foot down and I told her we had to quit. That it was the cigarettes or me. She promised me she would. That we'd go away somewhere and leave the cigarettes behind; live healthy lives that didn't involve extensive cardio or long-winded bouts of tabletop karaoke. Both of us. Together."

"I take it she didn't keep her promise."

He nodded his head grimly. "Cops caught her last night in a Dave and Buster's bathrooms with two cartons and a zippo." Eyesquit stifled a sob. "I asked her if she saw a future with us. Turns out she couldn't see it either."

"Sometimes people don't understand what they're signing up for when they start smoking. Not everyone has your willpower, Eyesquit. For some people, quitting it's really really hard. Like insanely difficult. Almost impossible."

"Right, of course," said Eyesquit. "But you quit anyway. That's what self preservation is. It's putting down the thing that kills you and walking away." He sighed. "I would've given it all up for her. My lighters. My menthols. Everything. But now, what's the point?" Eyesquit took another hit. No, literally, he took another hit. Puffgustus tripped him and he banged his knee on the coffee table on the way down.

Puffgustus looked over at me, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, and half smiled. "I can't stop thinking about Ashtray."

"Puffgustus! You literally tripped Eyesquit."

"I just need to know what happens," he continued. "Does she get arrested? Does she get clean? Was the tobacco man a narc?"

"Valhala's balls," I said, cradling Eyesquit's bleeding head. "I think he's hemorrhaging!"

"Hazy," Puffgustus said, urgently. "Look at me." He shoved Eyesquit out of the way and into a nearby china cabinet. "You're sure he never wrote a sequel?"

"No," I told him, watching Eyesquit stumble into a nearby wall. "He moved to Cuba which makes me think he's writing a sequel featuring the Dutch Tobacco Farmer, but he hasn't published anything. He's never spotted out in public -not even to get cigars. His assistant does all his shopping and when he does get out, the press can never get a good shot because his head is surrounded by a permanent cloud of smoke." Then I suddenly realized… "Eyesquit!" I ran over to him, where he was still fumbling over the floor.

"Relax," Puffgustus said. He stepped towards Eyesquit, leaned down, and placed a cigarette in his mouth. "Feel better?" Puff asked.

"No," Eyesquit wheezed, his chest heaving as he took a drag from his cigarette. "But I can't stop."

"That's the thing about cigarettes," Puffgustus said, putting his lips to Eyesquit's filter and taking a drag. Then he glanced longingly at his cigarette. "They demand to be smoked."


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FOUR:

I did not speak to Puffgustus for about a week. I went about my life: I met Patch for my supply; I ingested my daily allowance of nicorette gum; I went online shopping for a new shock collar; and every night, I sat down to dinner with my mom and dad to vape.

Sunday night, after 19 Cigarettes and Counting, I got a call from Puffgustus who had finished the end of An Imperial Addiction.

"It just feel like, like."

"Like?" I flicked my bic impatiently.

"Like smoking a cigarette. Like it ended too soon."

"But it doesn't end."

"I know. Like why would he do that?!" Puffgustus blubbered into the phone. "I mean, who doesn't finish their book?! That's just so mean. We don't even know if she got arrested! I need to know Hazy. I NEED TO KNOW! Does she relapse? What happened to Lindsay Lohan? Not in the story, just as a general question. Is the Dutch Tobacco farmer even a member of the AARP?!"

"I'm sorry Puff. I just do't know."

I could hear Puff rolling tobacco amidst distant sobbing.

"Puffgustus," I said sternly, "put down the cigarettes right now."

"I can't Hazy," Puffgustus said. "It's just too sad. "I need a cigarette. It's too stressful. I need to know what happens. I need to know there's a chance for someone like me. If Ashtray could finally quit smoking cigarettes that means I have to have a shot, right?"

"I don't know," I told him, feeling a little defensive of Smoker Van Hookah. "That's part of what I like about the book in some ways, though. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your cigarette, in the middle of a drag."

"It's so unfair."

"Maybe we could write to him," I prompted. "Ask him some questions."

"I've already sent an email. I just need to know if she ended up quitting. I need to know if she stayed clean. If there's hope for a Tobacco farmer's daughter, surely there's hope for me too."

Puff's phone dinged. "Holy smokes!" Puffgustus gasped. I could hear the cigarette drop right out of his mouth. "He responded!"

"Who responded?"

"Smoker Van Hookah!"

"Well go on," I urged. "Read it!"

"My response is being written with ink and paper as I light a cigar in the glorious tradition of my Cuban ancestors. Given the sorrowful state of my bank account, I am forever grateful you bought my book, for it is the only source of income I have left in which to sustain my fine taste for eclectic Cuban cigars.

Though, in the past, my luck has made me fortunate enough to savor some of the best Cuban cigars in the world, my poker skills have dwindled in my young age. Osteoporosis has set in, my holding hands aren't what they used to be, and I have a craving for Nutella which is an unrelated matter but still a matter of serious imortance. This week, may be the last week I can afford cigarettes.

I have registered for Cuba's International Poker Tournament. It's all on the line tonight. If you wish to know the secrets of An Imperial Addiction, you will have to do so in person, as I am weak, and I must save my hands for this tournament. If you find yourself in Cuba, I will tell you what you need to know.

With All My Cigarettes,

—Peter Van Hookah"

I spent the next two hours vaping. It seemed to get worse each time I did it now. I could feel the lagging effects of withdraw setting in. I was losing it. Slowly, surely, completely. I had to know what happened at the end of that book. I needed to know as badly as Puffgustus. Was there hope for two chainsmokers like us?

"MOM!" I shouted down the stairs. "Can I use my college fund to go see Smoker Van Hookah in Cuba?"

"You already blew it on cigarettes!"

"Drat," I said. She was right. I dialed Puffgustus' number. He answered immediately.

"Meet me at the usual joint," I said and hung up. He was over in five minutes. He drove extra fast. He kind of had to. I'd confiscated all his lighters. Then I cut the brakes to his car.

"That sucks," Puffgustus said when I explained why I couldn't go. "Do you have any money?"

"No," I said. "I used it all up."

"What'd you spend it on."

"Mostly cigarettes," I said.

"I feel like there's something you aren't telling me."

I sighed loudly. "I was thirteen," I said.

"Not Hooters," he said.

I said nothing.

"You did not go to Hooters."

I said nothing.

"Hazy VAPES!" he shouted. "You did not use your cigarette cash on Hooters."

"Hot wings go so good with cigarettes," I whispered, hanging my head in shame.

"Yeah," Puffgustus said, gripping the edge of the table. He closed his eyes, painfully, and I could hear the sharp intake of his breath as his hand whitened. "Yeah, they do."

"We'll just have to find another way to get to Cuba," I said.

"I need a cigarette," he said.

I wanted to protest but I could feel my hands shaking. The withdraws were becoming too much, even for me. I handed him his lighter.

"Want a hit?" Puffgustus said after a few drags.

"Just one," I said.

"Ashtray?" he offered.

"Ashtray."


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER FIVE:

The next day, I felt very bad about my relapse. The sky was gray and full of smoke but not yet suffocating. I leaned over breathing deep through my asthma. I tried to tell myself that it could be worse, that the world was not a cigarette factory, that I was living with withdraws, not dying of cancer, that I mustn't lose my resolve. Then I just started muttering cancer cancer cancer cancer cancer cancer over and over again, hoping to remind myself of the very real risks of my addiction. I was still in my fetal position when a familiar cloud of smoke found me.

"Puffgustus?" I questioned, taking my thumb from my mouth. I fanned the air and looked up, parting the clout of smog that surrounded his entire form.

"Are you crying?" I asked him.

"Maybe," Puffgustus sniffed.

"Why?" I asked.

"Cause I'm just -I just want to go to Cuba, and smoke cigarettes, and I can't because we're trying to quit. I just wanted one last blow-out. One last drag of that cigarette before I had to say goodbye."

"Puffgustus…"

"It doesn't matter anyway. We were never going to raise the money. Maybe it's a good thing," Puffgustus said. "One of the many drawbacks of smoking is that the threat of cancer looms over you forever," he answered. He held the filter between his fingers, then put it in his mouth and lit it. Then he lit another and also put it in his mouth. Then he shoved another fistful of them and lit the ends.

"What are you blind? I just got a new lung transplant!" I smacked Puffgustus over the head with a waffle iron I just happened to keep in my backpack for waffle stuff. He spat out his cigarettes and lept to his feet. "Blind… blind! I've got it!" Puffgustus announced. "I've figured it out how we're going to get the cash. I know how we're going to get to Cuba," he said.

"So let's hear it. This grand plan of yours," I said after we'd broken into Eyesquit's house.

"Eyesquit had surgery last week to fix his sight. It went well."

"Eyesquit can see again?"

"No," Puffgustus said. "It went well for us. He's NES."

"What's NES?" I asked.

"No evidence of sight," he said excitedly. "Everything is coming up cigarettes."

"Is that why you brought us here?" I asked, looking around Eyesquit's room.

"That's exactly why I've called you here, Hazy Vapes."

"So how does this help us?

Puffgustus pointed to a bag of cash off the dresser. "We use Eyesquit's secret stash."

"Is it really a secret if it's on his dresser?"

"Not if he can't see it."

"Sounds good to me," I said, swiping the duffel full of cash. Puffgustus booked the flight on my phone. "Let's go!"

"Wait," Puff said. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked.

"Puffgustus," I said, sensing hesitation in his voice. "What's wrong."

"I'm like... I'm like a cigarette, Hazy," he said. "I'm a cigarette, and at some point I'm going to light up and I would like to minimize the people around me affected by secondhand smoke, okay?"

"Well that's too bad," I said. "Because the world is not a cigarette factory."

"I know what you're trying to do, but you can't change me Hazy. You realize that trying to keep a distance from me and my cigarettes will not lessen my affection for them. All efforts to keep me from them will fail-" Puffgustus dropped to the ground, clutching the collar I'd slipped around his neck as he convulsed on the floor.

"Speaking of your rehabilitation..." I turned the lever up on my new remote control shock collar.

"No. Hazy no! HAZY STAHP!"

After I'd wrestled Puffgustus's new shock collar onto him, we turned on the TV for a little while and watched Cigarettes, Actually, but eventually that ended and we couldn't find anything to watch besides stop smoking advertisements. I grabbed An Imperial Addiction off the bedside table and brought it back into the living room and Puffgustus read to me while I vaped. As I read, I fell in love the way you smoke a cigarette: constantly, only stopping for chemotherapy.

The day before we left for Cuba, I stopped by the Stop Smoking Support Group for the first time since meeting Puffgustus. The cast had rotated a bit down there in the Literal Lungs of Jesus. A fire had spread over from Our Lady of Perpetual Chainsmokers, leaving several dead.

I arrived early, enough time to slip an IOU in to Eyesquit's pocket and slip out the door. I walked briskly, as to avoid Pattywhack recount the story of how smoking had made his balls fall off again. But just as I was making my way to the door, Pattywhack stopped me.

"Hazy Vapes," Pattywhack said, raising one seared eyebrow. "How nice of you to join us. We were just trading statistics on smoking. Perhaps you would like to contribute?"

"Uh," I faltered, cutting a quick glance to my broken watch. "Sure," I said.

Pattywhack waited.

"Smoking is …" I made my eyes wide and pointed behind Pattywhack. "Hey look!" I said, doing my best to look horrified. "A distraction!"

Pattywhack crossed his arms stubbornly. "No way. I'm not falling for that one again."

A wild destraction appeared, sawing his arms clean off. It was a critical hit.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Pattywhack cried as the distraction knawled it's teeth down on his human flesh.

In that moment, I made my escape. At the curb, Puffgustus idled in the getaway car, a freshly lit cigarette in hand, waving an electric collar from his spare hand. I scowled at the shock collar, but quickly got into the car. I yanked the shock collar from his hand, chucking it out the window where it hit a disoriented Eyesquit stumbling from the carnage. "GO, GO, GO!" I yelled at Puffgustus and we fled the scene. In the rearview mirror I could see Eyesquit stumble into the street, flailing blindly as an oncoming semi swerved into a school bus of orphaned diabetic puppies.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

We were free.


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER SIX:

We had to go straight to the airport if we wanted to make our flight to Cuba. We could only use one suitcase for clothes, as the other was filled with cigarettes. I argued with Puffgustus that he should throw them out but the luggage had a combination lock on it and if we didn't leave now, we'd never get to the poker tournament.

Our flight left that afternoon. We got to the gate an hour before our scheduled boarding time. This was mostly because my watch had broken again and now read 4:20. I couldn't tell if we were running late or early.

As seats around the gate started to fill, Puffgustus said, "I'm gonna smoke a cigarette before we leave."

But before I could protest, he had already lit up letting the wafting whips of a freshly lighted cigar fill the cabin.

I could feel everyone watching us, wondering if we knew the dangers of smoking; whether we knew it would kill us. Wondering if we knew that in the US 33,000 nonsmokers die each year from coronary heart disease stemming from secondhand smoke, or that smoking cigarettes was one of the leading causes of deaths related to fires in America, or that in the 21st century, worldwide tobacco deaths could total one billion if current trends continue. That was the worst part about smoking, sometimes: The physical evidence of what it would do to you. I took another hit of my vape as the pilot prepared to take off."

"Excuse me," a blonde stewardess said to Puffgustus, breaking me from my thoughts, "Sir, this isn't a Cuban airline. You can't smoke on the plane."

"That's what you get," I said, sticking out my tongue.

"Mam, I'm going to need your vapes, as well. Vaping or any kind of recreational substances on this airline are strictly prohibited."

"But it's a metaphor," I tried to explain, as she pulled the vapes from my hand. "You put the killing thing in your mouth and you give it the power to kill you. No," I paled. "No. Please. I NEED MY VAPES. I NEED MY VAPES!"

"You can smoke your metaphor when we arrive, miss."

It was a long flight to Cuba without my vapes. Five hundred twenty- five thousand, six hundred seconds, to be precise. Not that I was counting.

But if I had been, counting, that was, it was literally five million years before the flight attendant gave me back my vapes. When she gave Puffgustus back his cigarettes, I thought he would cry from relief. He walked off the terminal a broken man.

"There there," he whispered to his cigarettes, stroking the side of their packaging like a precious crown jewel. Puff looked out into the distance, for the first time, catching a glimpse of the smog that bruised over the sky in smoldering stacks of gray. "God, that is beautiful," Puffgustus said mostly to himself, pulling a coffin nail from his pack.

"Observation: it would be more beneficial to my health if you vaped instead," I said, offering him mine.

"Also I'd live longer," he yawned, lighting the stick in his hands up anyway. "You know, carcinogens or whatever."

"Are you sleepy?" I asked him.

"Not at all," he answered.

"Yeah," I said. "Me neither."

"Want to watch another movie when we board the next flight?" he asked, looking through his bag. "I've got An Abundance of Cigarettes, Looking for Asthma, Paper Filters..." Puffgustus stopped. "Wait. These are books. Ah ha!" he exclaimed a moment later. "Charlie and the Cigarette Factory. Perfect."

"I don't know," I told him. "I still think we could do better."

"Well too bad, Hazy Vapes. The world is not a cigarette granting factory," Puffgustus said, quoting Charlie and the Cigarette Factory as we handed our tickets to the stewardess and boarded the our connecting flight.

"I want to watch something you haven't seen. Lets try this one," I said, handing him a movie from my carry on as we took our seats.

"Nightmare on Smoke Street? Is that anything like The Chainsmoker Massacre?" Puff asked as took our seats. I grabbed my laptop from my bag and popped the CD in.

"Just trust me."

Five hours and twenty-seven cigarettes later, Puffgustus refused to sleep. "It's gonna kill me in my sleep," he exclaimed. "Emphysema, bronchitis, OSTEOSMOKOSIS!"

"That's not even a disease!"

"Not yet," Puffgustus said, gazing longingly at his tobacco fingers. "But just you wait."

"You're being ridiculous!"

"How many dead people do you think there are, huh? How many dead people do you think have died from smoking cigarettes? A lot, okay? I'm one of them. I know I'll be. I'll be another statistic one day. You know it, I know it, and it's time I make my peace with it. I'm smoke in the wind, Hazy, and everyone knows it," he said. "But there's still hope for you. You can still beat this."

"There's hope for you too," I said to Puffgustus. "You just have to quit smoking them."

"I'm in love with them," he said quietly.

"Puffgustus," I said.

"I am," he said. "I love my cigarettes," he whispered quietly to his pack of Marlboro red 100 lights. He was staring at the carton, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "But I'm in love with them, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple decency of health and longevity. I'm in love with them, and I know every cigarette I light shaves another minute off my life, and that my hair will thin, and my skin will dry out, and that vaping is hella safer and way less cool, and I love my cigarettes."

"Puffgustus," I said again, not knowing what else to say. It felt like everything was rising up in me, like the billowing stacks of smoke that rose from the space between his fingers when he smoked a cigarette. He looked at his cigarettes like he was drowning in this air-thickening, suffocating joy, but I knew that it would kill him. I couldn't say anything back. I, too, knew the pain of withdraws. I just looked at him and let him look at me until he pulled another carton from his coat pocket that we both knew the flight attendant would inevitably take away.


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER SEVEN:

I think he must have fallen asleep with a cigarette in his mouth. I expected it to go out, but the coals in it stoked for some time after. It faded eventually, and I woke to the stewardess, confiscating his stash. When he turned toward me, his mouth smelled like ash and I tried to keep it shut for fear of it poisoning my willpower. "Shh," I told him. "Don't struggle."

"Where are we?" Puff said, after I'd made him brush his teeth. I looked over at Puffgustus who was staring out the window, and as we dipped below the cigarette-shaped clouds, I straightened my back to see Cuba.

After a pat-down from TSA, we got our bags from the terminal and cleared customs. They found most of Puff's stash during the full cavity search, but I wasn't stupid enough to think he hadn't stashed some more contraband in his fake prosthetic leg: another side effect of his addiction to tobacco.

Which is why, I strongly suspected, he hobbled a bit unevenly as we approached the idling taxi cab waiting for us at the curb.

"The Hotel Filtersoot?" I asked.

And he said, "And you are poker players?"

"Something like that," I said. The cabbie pulled into traffic and we headed toward a highway with lots of stop smoking billboards. "This is Cuba?" I asked the cabdriver.

"Yes and no," he answered. Cuba is like a ring of cigarette smoke: You get better at making it out the closer you get to the center."

It happened all at once: We exited the highway and there were the plantation houses of my imagination leaning precariously towards coffeeshops advertising LARGE SMOKING ROOM. We drove over a canal and from atop the bridge I could see dozens of tobacco plants moored along the water. Puffgustus inhaled the sweet scent of tobacco crop. I looked away, hoping to distract myself from how badly I wanted a real cigarette.

"Are these tobacco plantations very old?" asked Puffgustus.

"Many of the cigar manufacturers date back to the seventeenth century," he said. "Our city has a rich history, even though many tourists are only wanting to see the Light Up District." He paused. "Some tourists think Cuba is a city of cigars, but in truth it is a city of poker. And in poker, most people find cigars."

All the rooms in the hotel Filtersoot were named after various packs of cigarettes. I was staying in the Camel Concierge room; Puffgustus was on the floor above in the Newport Suite; a benefit of being an Old Gold Rewards member.

The Filtersoot was right next to Vaperpark. Cuba's most famous Smokitorium. Puffgustus wanted to go immediately, but on the way up, a tobacco vender made him an offer he couldn't refuse. After waiting for him for an hour, I took the elevator upstairs.

"Hello?" I said through the door, when I'd found his room. There was no peephole at the Hotel Filtersoot.

"What's the password?" Puffgustus answered. I could hear the cigarette in his mouth.

I pulled the door open, one hand on my hip. Puffgustus wore a smoldering charcoal suit. A cigarette dangled from the unsmiling corner of his mouth. "Give it."

"Give what?" Puffgustus said, trying to hide it behind him.

"The cigarette," I demanded.

"Ah, this old thing?"

"Now."

Puffgustus sulked the whole tram ride. We rode the tram for three cigarette brakes, me leaning over Puff so I could inhale the scent of Cuban air.

Puffgustus pointed up at the trees and asked, "Do you see that?"

I did. There were tobacco plants everywhere along the canals, and we caught the scent of them as the breeze blew through them.

Puffgustus didn't say anything more the rest of the trip, and when the tram finally stopped, we walked to a nearby coffeehouse. After Puffgustus had stuffed himself on the complementary cigars Smoker Van Hookah had sent to our table, we walked along the canal as it got dark. The only light visible was the burning end of Puff's cigar. Though, I could see a halo of smoke coming from the Light Up District.

"I can't believe Smoker Van Hookah is going to tell us tomorrow," I said. "I just need to know if Ash's mom gets married to the Dutch Tobacco Man."

"Don't forget Sniffstuff the Hamster," Puffgustus added.

"So what's your guess?" he asked.

"I really don't know. I've gone back and forth like a thousand smoke breaks about it all. Each time I inhale, I think something different, you know?" He nodded. "You have a theory?

"Yeah. I don't think the Dutch Tobacco Man is a cop, but he's also not as rich in tobacco as he leads them to believe. And I think Ashtray gets arrested, her mom goes to Cuba with him and thinks they'll smoke forever, but it doesn't work out, because cancer runs in their family and he's not even a real Scorpio."

I hadn't realized he'd thought about the book so much, that An Imperial Addiction mattered to Puff independently of his love for cigarettes.

"Can I ask you about Nicorette?" I asked, after building up the courage.

"What do you want to know?"

"Just, like, what happened. Why it didn't work out?"

Puffgustus sighed, inhaling his cigarette for so long it almost seemed like bragging. He popped a fresh cigarette in his mouth. "The thing about cigarettes," he said, stopping to inhale again. "The thing is you sound like a bastard if you romanticize them, but the truth is… complicated, I guess. Like you are familiar with the stereotype of the stoic and determined quitter who heroically fights their withdraws with inhuman strength and never complains about only smoking vapes. But Nicorette, made me feel like for the first time I could stop. That there was a way out for me."

"So what happened?"

"It started with a patch, led to two. Then three. Before I knew it, I was slapping squares on my skin like Girl Scout badges. When I was without them, I was always moody and miserable, but I liked it. I liked feeling as though I could beat the addiction. That there was some part of it that was working. That there was a way out for me that didn't end in cancer, you know?"

I knew.

"You know that part in An Imperial Addiction when Ashtray's walking across the street to the convenience store and she falls and goes face-first into a eighteen wheeler and that's when she knows the Osteoporosis is back?"

I wasn't sure you could beat Osteoporosis but I didn't interrupt.

"So afterward, while I was being casually eviscerated by the series finale of Breaking Bad, for some reason I decided to feel really hopeful. Not about quitting specifically, but cutting back. But meanwhile, my addiction for Nicotine got worse every day. I went home after a while and there were moments where I thought I could have, like, less of them or something, but I couldn't. It just wasn't the same. Because the patches had no filters, no ash, no smoke. The feelings of withdraw began to creep back inside my lungs, crawling under, taunting me, mocking me, filling up the space in my lungs the way I wished a cigarette would. Eventually, I couldn't hold out anymore. I pulled out a cigarette at my sister's birthday party and made a nosedive for the birthday candles. That was the day I knew there's no middle ground for me, Hazy. If I don't quit, I'll die. So I might as well make my choice."

"I hope one day you'll make the right choice."

"Me too, Hazy Vapes," he said. "Me too."

"Need a light?" I asked him as he pulled out another cigarette.

"Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazy Vapes. it would be a privilege to have my cigarette lighted by you."


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER EIGHT:

I woke up at 4:20 ready for the day. All attempts to keep Puffgustus from cigarettes failed, so I finished my leftover coffee and searched for something to wear, pondering where we'd go from here.

I settled on a screen print of Lindsay Lohan's ashtray with large cursive letters that read Cect un tuyau. ("This is a pipe.")

After breakfast, we hailed a taxi, and left the Hotel Filtersoot. As it got closer to ten, Puffgustus grew more nervous and nervous. I knew this, of course, because he kept reaching for his cigarettes and putting them back down again.

"Am I seeing this correctly?" I asked Puffgustus. "Did you really just refuse to smoke a cigarette in the car?"

"I'm saving myself for Van Hookah. Everyone knows Cubans make the best cigars. I don't want to spoil my appetite."

Smoker Van Hookah's smokehouse was just around the corner of the hotel. Puffgustus took me by the arm as we walked to the bouncer who stood behind a velvet rope in hella fine shades. My heart pounded. We were only one closed door away from the cigars I'd dreamed of ever since I'd quit smoking.

Inside, I was hit by a wall of thickening air. It appeared to be coming from beneath a closed door. A dead bolt slid open and a charcoal-gray beard peeked around the corner. Could it be? "Mr. Van Hookah?" Puffgustus asked, hacking from the smog rolling out from behind the door.

The door slammed shut. Behind it, I heard a wheezing, nasally voice shriek, "LI-DUH-FLOO-ID!" (Until then, I'd been pronouncing his assistant's name much differently.)

We could hear everything through the door. "Are they here?" a woman asked.

"They are Lighterfluid, please send them in. Also, fetch a box of my finest cigars for the young couple."

"Yes Mr. Hookah."

A long silence ensued, and then finally the door opened again. "This way," the assistant said. "Mr. Van Hookah will see you now."

We walked to the threshold, taking in the sight of Smoker Van Hookah's home. Not that there was much to see. The smoke had been as black as could be expected from an avid poker puffer, but as we neared Van Hookah's table, the lights from overhead did help illuminate the center. A grand poker table stretched out in front of Smoker Van Hookah, surrounded by an assortment of smokers. He set his cards down, crushing his cigar into a crystal ashtray.

"Would you care for some breakfast?" asked Lighterfluid. She held out a box of cigars.

"Nonsense, Lighterfluid. It's too early for breakfast. Come! I will not have my visitors inhaling cheap American knockoffs. Do you smoke Cohiba Behike?" I had heard of that brand before. Cohiba Behike cigars were $18,800 dollars a box. It was one of the rarest and most expensive cigar brands in the world. And I was sure, one of the deadliest.

"I could buy a car with that," I said as he lit one up and took a deep intake. He lifted up the box, offering it to Puffgustus.

"I'll take two," Puff said.

"So you like my book," Van Hookah said to Puffgustus after another drag.

"Yeah," I said, speaking up on Puffgustus's behalf. "I robbed a blind man so that we could come here, so that you could tell us what happens after the end of An Imperial Addiction."

"It was more of a team effort," Puffgustus quipped.

Van Hookah took a long pull on his cigar. "So what are your questions?"

"Ash's mom, the Dutch Tobacco Man, Sniffstuff. What happens to them?"

Van Hookah shuffled a deck of cards on the table, closing his eyes. "The hamster," he said after a while. "The hamster was never real. Sniffstuff was a hallucination brought on by the effects of laced tobacco Ashtray got behind the convenience store that day."

"And what of the Dutch Tobacco Man? Was he a narc?"

"Was the Dutch Tobacco Man a cop? You were close. He was actually an FBI agent doing an undercover sting operation. They get halfway to Cuba before Ashtray's mom finds the badge in his suitcase. She confronts him, takes his stash of cigars, and makes a break for Mexico where she can begin a new life as a Seven-Eleven clerk."

"And what about Ashtray? Did she get arrested?" Puffgustus's voice wavered.

"After finding out that her hamster Sniffstuff was an apparition, Ashtray spiraled into a descending pit of despair. Shortly after she relapsed and started smoking to numb the pain. She got cancer shortly after. She never went into remission."

"SMOULDERDASH! That's smoulderdash!" Puffgustus shouted. "She can't just die! If Ashtray can't stop smoking, what hope is there for me? For any of us?"

I pulled Puffgustus out of the room and I didn't need the smell of smoke to tell me, he had taken Van Hookah up on that box of his finest cigars.

For Puffgustus there was no such thing as a quick smoke break, but we made our way down the stairs, Puff clutching the box of Cuban cigars to his chest, and then started to walk back toward the Filtersoot on a littered sidewalk of interwoven rectangular cigarette butts. Puffgustus cried and coughed between drags.

"Hey," I said, poking him. I tried patting him awkwardly on his head. "Hey. It's okay."

"There's no hope for me," Puffgustus sobbed. "If Ash can't even stop smoking, what makes you think I can? There's no hope for me."

"No," I said, firmly. "I refuse to accept that. We'll write a new epilogue. A better one. There will be withdraws and shivers and nicotine patches and glorious triumph. An Imperial Addiction meets The Price of Menthols. You'll love it. You and me are going to beat this thing. Right after this cigarette. Ashtray?" I offered, handing him a crystal bowl I'd swapped from Van Hookah's house.

Puffgustus smiled and dropped his cigarette into it. "Ashtray."

Lighterfluid drove us back to the Filtersoot. Once inside, we squeezed into the tiny elevator. We stared at the people down below, leaning against the building on their smoke break. Puffgustus licked his lips. "They sure are taking a long smoke break."

"Some smoke breaks are large than other smoke breaks."

The next morning, our last full day in Cuba, Puffgustus and I walked the half block from the hotel to Vaperpark. Puffgustus flicked his thumb over his cigarette lighter, the way he only did when something was really bothering him. "What is it," I said.

Puffgustus looked up. "I have to tell you something Hazy and I'm not sure you're going to like it," Puff said. I watched him pull a cigarette from his pack and stick it between his lips. But this time he didn't light it.

I waited.

"Just before we boarded our flight, I read something pretty disturbing. I think you should take a look for yourself," Puffgustus said, pulling newspaper from beneath his jacket sleeve. He looked reluctant, as though he was unsure if he should give it to me. Reluctantly, he extended his arm. I looked down at the headline. What I read would change my life.

VAPING NOT AS SAFE AS ONCE THOUGHT

"My voice felt small. "No."

"Hazy…"

"How long have you known?" I demanded. "How long have you had this?"

Puffgustus sighed. "A while."

"No," I said, shoving the article back into his hands, angrily. This couldn't be true. "This is a lie. A trick. Smoke and mirrors."

"And what if it's not, Hazy? What if you really haven't been getting better? What if you've been getting worse?"

"What are you trying to tell me? That vaping was for nothing?"

"I did some research and they say there's not enough evidence to support the idea that vaping is safer than smoking. It isn't even regulated by the Food and Drug Administration," Puffgustus said. "For all we know, vapes cause more damage than actual cigarettes do. There just isn't enough research to say definitively. I'm sorry, Hazy. I had to tell you like this. I just thought you should know the risks."

"This can't be."

"I'm sorry."

"I need a cigarette," I muttered. Oddly, though, he didn't to light the one dangling from his lips. As though he was suffering on my account so in my moment of weakness I wouldn't reach for one too. I had seen that look before. Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to light up a cigarette, so I knew what Puffgustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that wisp of clouds outside the window doesn't look like smoke, and then you look at the person you love and slap on another nicotine patch. You do it for them. Or at least you try.

"This isn't fair," I said.

"The world," he said, "is not a cigarette factory."

"Do you think I could bum one of those from you?"

Puffgustus handed me one and drew one for himself.

By the end of the minute, they were lit like a Christmas tree.

On the flight home, we boarded a Cuban airline. Twenty thousand cigarettes above the ground, Puffgustus said, "I could really go for another smoke."

I looked at my vapes, now worthless to me, thinking of a reason not to. "Better the carcinogen you know, I guess." I sighed.

A flight attendant walked through the aisle with a cigarette cart, half whispering, "Cigars? Cigarettes? Hookah? Vapes?" Puff leaned over me, raising his hand. "Could we have two of your finest cigars?"

"You're eighteen?" she said dubiously.

"What are you a cop?" I asked.

The stewardess rolled her eyes. "Here," she said, placing an assortment of cigars into two plastic cups. "On the house."

Puff and I toasted, "To cigars," he said, burning the end with his lighter.

"To cigars," I said, touching my cigar to his.

We smoked. Less potent cigars than the ones we'd gotten from Van Hookah, but still good enough to light.

When our flight landed, we picked up our cigarettes at the terminal and drove back to Puff's house. We smoked some of the cigars with his parents and told them stories about Cuba while Puff puffed on the living room couch, where we started watching C for Cancer.

I could just see him from the kitchen: He lay on his back, head turned away from me, a cigarette butt already lit. His parents were making him go back to the Stop Smoking Support Group so he was trying to get as many smoke breaks in as possible before then.

Later that day, we stopped by Eyesquit's home with one of Van Hookah's cases of cigarettes. We figured it was the least we could do for robbing him blind and then pushing him down the stairs.

On our way back home, I stopped with Puffgustus to throw them away. Before chucking them in the trash, I took one last hit for old times sake and offered Puff a turn.

I never vaped again with him.


	10. Chapter 10

CHAPTER NINE:

A few days later, Gus's parents sent him to rehab. I drove to the inpatient center the next morning and visited him on the fourth floor, room twenty.

When the elevator doors opened, I saw Gus's mom vaping in the waiting room, taking a drag. She exhaled quickly, then hugged me and offered me some. I politely declined.

"How's Gus?" I said.

"He had a rough night, Hazy," she said. "His lungs are working too hard. He needs to scale back on the cigarettes. Cold turkey from here on out. They're putting him on some new nicotine patches that should be better for the withdraws, but from this moment on, not one cigarette will touch his lips. They're dumped his stash as we speak."

She was hopeful, I thought. But her and I both knew they would never find all of Puffgustus's cigarettes.

"Okay," I said. "Can I see him?"

She put her arm around me and squeezed my shoulder. It felt weird. "You know we love you, Hazy, but right now we need to surround Puff with good influences. Ashtray?" she offered, seeing that I was now clutching the cigarettes in my front pocket.

"But you were just vaping-"

"Sweetheart, vapes are safe."

If only she knew the truth.

One morning, a month after rehab, Puff returned home. His parents told me he was still detoxing downstairs, so I hid my lighter, set my cigarettes by the door, and knocked loudly before entering, then asked, "Puff?" I found him in a fetal position, mumbling and rocking back and forth as he stared blankly ahead.

I didn't really say anything to him. I just waited for him to stop crying. He was such a drag. I was starting to miss cigarettes. "Hazy," he said. "Hazy, did you bring the cigarettes?"

"You're gonna die, Puff. Believe me. You don't want t do this. You need to get better."

"You used," he wheezed, "to call me Puffgustus."

I looked away.

Puff smirked. "You know I used to smoke a pack a day…" he bragged.

"The nurses gave me some exercises to complete," he said after a while. "They want me to ask my friends to write a eulogy. They think if they confront me with the truth of my disease I'll commit more seriously to treatment.

"Will you?" I asked him.

Puffgustus scoffed. "Pft. Of course, not. Now give me my cigarettes."

"You're gonna die Puff! You can't go on like this!"

"I just want to be enough for you, Hazy, but I never can be! Don't you see? A life without cigarettes can never be enough for me. I'm sorry if I'm not going to be the first man on mars or play for the NBA or become a claims adjuster from SoHo who uses color-safe bleach. I've made my choice."

So we just smoked.

Later that week, I woke up to my phone singing a song by The Hectic Blow. Gus's favorite. It was the hospital calling. I glanced at the alarm clock: 4:20. "He's relapsed," I thought.

I picked up the phone. "Puff?"

"Hazy Vapes, I'm at the gas station. Something's wrong. My fake ID isn't working. The clerk's starting to look suspicious and-"

"Be cool, Puff. Just be cool. Tell me what's going on."

"I think they know."

"What?" I said, startled. "No no no no no. They find out your fake ID is a forgery, they'll find mine too."

"I think they're calling nine-one-one, Hazy," he said panicked. "I need a getaway car. I'm eighteen! I can't go to jail. They'll take away all my cigarettes!"

"I think they actually let you keep those."

"Go on."

"We don't have time for this."

"Tell me more about this 'jail'."

"Just stay put," I told Puffgustus. "I'm getting in my car right now. Where are you?"

"The Smokeway at Eighty-sixth and Something-" Puffgustus stopped. "Oh, God Hazy, they're calling nine-nine-one," he said. "AHHHHHHHHH!"

As I drove down the road to meet Puffgustus, I could see the flashing blue lights at the end of the lot. Two police engines sat in the parking lot of the gas station. I pulled up just in time to see the cops pushing him into the back of the squad car.

"I just wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes," he sobbed. "I lost my pack or they took it away from me. I don't know. They said they'd get me another one, but they wouldn't… I just wanted to smoke one for myself. Smoke one tiny cigarette for myself. And then a second one. And also two cartons. And a menthol."

When the cops weren't looking he winked.

I ran to the car window. "Puff! What are you doing!" I jogged trying to keep up as they drove away.

"I'm going to prison, Hazy! Don't you see? It's all working out! Everything's coming up cigarettes!"

"Puffgustus!"

I went to visit Puff the next morning at the local detox center. He looked up at me from his new straight jacket. It was horrible. I could hardly look at him. The Puffgustus of crooked teeth and smoked cigarettes was gone, replaced by this desperate, humiliated chainsmoker unable to even light a birthday cake candle.

"This is it. I can't even smoke anymore."

"The judge said it was rehab or prison."

"They should've sent me to prison."

"The nurse gave you a mild sedative to calm down. This is for the best, you'll see."

"This isn't fair. You smoke cigarettes and you aren't in here."

"Yes, but I can quit them."

"If you think I'm just going to sit idily high while you take the one thing I love and let it blow up in smoke-"

"We're doing this because we love you. I'm not the bad guy, Puff."

"Even cigarettes aren't the bad guy really: Cigarettes just want to give you cancer."

The nurses came in and sedated him again, and as he drifted off to sleep, I recited the only poem I could bring to mind, "The Red Marlboro."

so much depends

upon

a red

marlboro cigarette

glazed with carcinogens

tobacco

inside the black

Lungs

"That's really good," Hazy vapes said. "Have you ever thought about writing a book?"

"Nah," Puffgustus wheezed. "I'll probably just end up writing shitty fanfiction."


	11. Chapter 11

CHAPTER TEN:

The terms of Puffgustus's release was that he go through a treatment program for smoking addiction.

"They're making us do this assignment where we get our loved ones to write a fake eulogy. It's an exercise in visualizing our future if we continue to smoke cigarettes," Puffgustus told me and Eyesquit. "Think of it as a funeral for my smoking days."

"Very well, I'll go first," Eyesquit said.

Eyesquit cleared his throat. "Puffgustus was an out-of-shape chainsmoker. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had lungs as black as tar, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any smoker in history, or because he got eighteen years of cigarettes when he should've gotten more."

"Seventeen," Puff corrected. "I'm seventeen."

"I see," Eyesquit whispered. "And how long have you been seventeen?"

"A while."

"Sick, pretentious, addicted to cigarettes. I know what you are."

"Say it. Out loud."

"Dancing queen," Puffgustus whispered.

Eyesquit nodded, suspecting as much, and continued. "Puffgustus smoked so much that he'd give you second hand smoke at his own funeral. And he was addicted: I do not believe I have met a more physically derelict, disheveled and decrepit person who was more acutely aware of tobacco on a cellular level than him. But I will say this: When the tobacco farmers of the future show up at my house with cigars and try to sell them to me, I will tell those tobacco farmers to butt out, because I don't want to smoke in a world where Puffgustus can't have cigarettes."

I was beginning to get choked up, mostly because Puffgustus was smoking a cigarette right in front of me. I swiped it from his hand and took a big drag from it, placing it on the podium, making smoke rings as I exhaled. "My name is Hazy Vapes," I said. "Puffgustus was the great chainsmoker of my life. His love for tobacco rivaled no other love for cigarettes I have ever seen which burned brighter than the coals of a thousand stogies."

I took a deep breath, inhaled more smoke, and continued. "Some smoke breaks are bigger than other smoke breaks. A writer we used to smoke with taught us that. There are days, many of them, I resent the size of my carton. I want more cigarettes than I'm likely to get, and God, I wanted more cigarettes for Puffgustus than he got. But, Puff, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little smoke breaks. I wouldn't trade it for menthols. You gave me cigarettes within the numbered days, and I'm grateful."

Puffgustus escaped the next day after his fake funeral.

He was with his mom and dad and cigarettes restrained to his hospital bed as the hospital staff tried to pry them from his cold, clammy hands. His mom called me at four twenty in the morning. I'd suspected, of course, that he was going to make a break for it. His withdraw had been getting worse with each passing hour, and from what evidence he'd left behind, he'd been planning it for some time. I'd talked to his dad before going to bed and he told me, "It could be tonight. He has that look in his eye. Like a caged, nicotine-addicted animal." But still, when I grabbed the phone from my bedside ashtray and saw Puff's mom on the caller ID, everything fell into place. Puff had fled. I had just known.

The cops came in then, looking expectant, as though I had any idea where he would have gone. They took me in for questioning and called Eyesquit down to the police station to give an eye witness statement. Although, I didn't much see the point.

When I went to the interrogation room, one of the first things they asked me was if I was holding any illegal cigarettes. As a minor, I'd been asked this question hundreds of times over the years, mostly by gas station clerks. I imagined Puffgustus in that interrogation room. He would have hated it. He wouldn't have lasted five minutes. Not even five cigarettes.

The questioning was unbearable. The whole thing. Every second without my cigarettes worse than the last. I just kept thinking about smoking them, wondering what would happen if I took one right out of my pocket, if the policemen would see. If my parents would put me in rehab too.

After it was over, the cops uncuffed me. When I walked out of the police station, I was surprised to see Smoker Van Hookah. He walked up to me, sliding a fat cigar into my pocket with a wink and said, "Need a ride?" I shrugged, and got in his car, twisting my cigar into the burner as he sped away.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry your friend was so upset. We corresponded a bit in his last email and—"

"Wait, you've heard from him?"

"Yes," Van Hookah told me. "I received a lengthy message from Puffgustus last evening detailing his troubles. I also thought he might want this," he said, handing me a box of nicotine patches as the car slowed in front of a curb and I got out of the car. "I have no use for them anymore. Even if I wanted to quit, my profession almost guarantees I will develop complications from secondhand smoke. It would be foolish to double down on that statistic. Since he isn't here, I suppose you can have them."

"Sir," I said, not knowing what to say. I took the box, looking down at the gifted cigars. "Sir, I can't possibly accept this—"

But when I turned around, he was smoke in the wind.

When I got home, Mom and Dad were at the dining room table waiting for me. "What's that in your hand?" my mom asked. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Cigars," I said. "I'm just going to smoke for a minute."

"Smoking's bad for you, Hazy."

"But Mom, I need a cigar." I took a step toward the sliding glass door but she cut me off before I could even reach for my lighter.

"Hazy, you have to stop smoking. Just put the cigars down. Lets talk about thi—"

"I don't need this," I said. "I'm going to the tobacco store."

"No," Mom said. "You're not." I glanced at my dad, who shrugged.

"It's my death," I said. "And I choose to go out with a cigarette in my mouth."

"You're not going to smoke yourself to death just because Puffgustus ran away. You're going to quit. You're going to get better."

I was really pissed off for some reason. "I can't quit, Mom. I can't. Okay?"

I tried to push past her but she grabbed both my cigars and said, "Hazy, you're quitting smoking. You need to stay healthy."

"NO!" I shouted. "I won't quit smoking, and I can't stay healthy, because I'm addicted to cigarettes. I'm addicted, Mom. I am going to die with a cigarette in my mouth and none of you can stop me!"

"Is that what you're going to do? Run off and become some miserable Cuban cigar smoker who sucks at poker? Is that what you're going to do with your life?"

"VAN HOOKAH!" I shouted. "Of course!"

I ran up to my room and searched for my laptop, smearing the ash from the keyboard. I immediately began composing an email.

Lighterfluid,

I believe Puffgustus sent an email to Van Hookah shortly before he ran away from rehab and the cops now have reason to suspect now he may be headed to Cuba. They believe I may have aided him in his escape and it may be the only form of an alibi I have to prove my innocence. It is very important I read it. Can you help?

—Hazy Vapes

She responded late that afternoon.

Dear Hazy,

I did not know that Puffgustus had fled the country. I am very sad to hear this news. I have spoken to Van Hookah and I will search for his email and forward the link.

—Lighterfluid

I wondered why he'd written Van Hookah from rehab. Had he asked him to write a new sequel to An Imperial Addiction? To help him escape? For more cigars? It made sense, Puff leveraging is misery for Van Hookah's sympathy.

I refreshed my email continuously that night and smoked for a few hours, but as of morning, nothing had arrived. Finally, after my third cigarette, Lighterfluid wrote me back just after four twenty P.M. while I was on the couch with a cigarette in one hand and a cigars in the other. My phone vibrated from my ashtray and scrambled to my nightstand and scooped it up from the crystal bowl. Dusting the soot off my phone, I clicked open the email.

Van Hookah,

I'm a good smoker but a shitty quitter. You're a shitty quitter but a good smoker. You also suck at poker. We'd make a good team. I don't want to ask you any favors, but if you have time, I would like you to take me off your mailing list. Though, you have the sickest cigar hookup I've ever come across, I must humbly decline your thoughtfully rolled gesture.

Here's the thing about Hazy: Almost everyone is obsessed with smoking. Breathing in cigarette ash. Lighting up cigars. Toking. Vaping. At some point in our lives we all think about starting up again. I do, too. That's what bothers me most, the thought of being another statistic, another casualty in the war against tobacco; a drug that kills six million people every year that we know of.

I want to stop smoking, so it is with great gratitude I must return your thoughtful gift. While I am appreciative, my doctors have also informed me that, for health reasons, I am not to travel to Cuba again as it holds too much temptation for me: The brands Cubans smoke are too often cigars.

Forgive me. I'm not making much sense. It has been three days since the cops took my fake ID and I haven't smoked a cigarette since. My thoughts are cigarettes I cannot buy at the convenience store.

My point is, Hazy Vapes is different. She has the willpower, the drive to quit, and I think one day she might actually do it. There was a time I thought I could walk away from the cigarettes on my own, that I didn't need rehab to stay clean, but now I know what Hazy knows: We're less likely to stop smoking than we are to stop breathing, and if we keep it up, we're likely to do both.

People will say it's sad she stopped smoking again, that she'll dodge lung cancer and bad teeth and osteoporosis but miss the euphoria of inhaling that first drag, of feeling alive. But the real heroes aren't the people smoking things; the real heroes are the people trying to QUIT because it's the hardest thing in the world to do.

After I escaped from rehab, I found my last pack of cigarettes. I held them close to me and tried to imagine a world without them. I couldn't. After three days of rehab, I thought I was strong enough to stop on my own, but I know I need help. I know I have to go back. With great sorrow, I must return your box of cigars. I know you'll take care of them, that you'll savor them the way only a Cuban poker player can. The way Hazy and I can't. The fault was not in your cigars, Van Hookah, it was in us.

What else? They are so addicting. You never get tired of smoking them. You never worry if they're bad for you: You know what they are, what they do to you, and you just don't care. I love them, Van Hookah, but I know smoking them will kill me so I am leaving them in your capable hands. You don't choose if you get cancer in this world, old man, but you do have some say in what pack ups your chances. I like my chances. I hope Hazy likes hers.

I do, Puffgustus.

I do.


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: Thank you for everyone who read! I hope I cracked you up! (:**

Disclaimer: I do not own anything by John Green. I am but a lonely basement-dwelling virgin with too much time on their hands.

—

*credits roll*

Puffgustus: So that's it?

Me: Yep. Pack it up. Show's over, buddy.

Hazy Vapes: Do you think you should go back and edit this a little? Maybe make some things clearer? That one dude seemed pretty pissed you funnied up his favorite book.

Me: It's satire, Hazy. I'm sure they'll understand I was going for a broad-overreaching anti-smoking theme rooted in cheap shock-value comedy.

Puffgustus: Yeah, yeah. I know. It's just some people might think you're making light of cancer or something.

Me: But his parody wasn't about cancer. It was making fun of smoking and the long term health reprocussions of—

Puffgustus: You know that. I know that. But are you sure _they_ know that?

Hazy Vapes: He has a point, you know.

Me: E tu, Hazy?

Puffgustus: I need a cigarette.

Hazy: *squirts Puffgustus with water* BAD KITTY!

Puffgustus: *hissing noises*

Me: Alexa, play Ashes by Celine Dion.

Deadpool: Nice.


End file.
